by Iain Cameron
‘I’m sorry Mr Brook,’ his secretary, Miriam said, ‘but Charles hasn’t arrived in the office yet.’
‘What time does he normally get in?’ Brook knew Landseer was always seated at his desk by eight, rain or shine, and it was now nine-thirty, but didn’t say so as he didn’t want to alarm Miriam yet.
‘By eight most days, but my guess is his train must have been delayed or something. He certainly didn’t go straight out to an appointment, as I’m looking at his diary now and he’s got nothing on until ten o’clock, and it’s a meeting in this office.’
‘Could you double-check?’
‘One moment.’
Brook looked around him. He realised if Bennett and his son left the shop now, they would probably walk this way, heading for the underground station. He felt a wave of panic, as the shop was less than five minutes away, but relaxed when he remembered that Bennett refused to travel on public transport.
‘Hello, Mr Brook. I’ve had a look in Charles’s desk diary and it says the same as my system; he doesn’t have any appointments until ten o’clock when he’s seeing our lawyer, Mr Rivers, at our offices.’
Landseer would never be late for a meeting, he was too OCD. ‘Would he phone you if his train’s been delayed?’
‘Yes, most certainly, Mr Brook. I must admit, I do find it odd, his phone may have run out of battery or something.’
‘Perhaps,’ Brook said, but he wasn’t convinced. Landseer carried around two phones: a Blackberry he used for work and a Nokia pay-as-you-go which he kept for personal calls. Landseer often described Brook’s personal life as ‘colourful’, but he could think of no better word for Landseer’s predilections than ‘sleazy’. He’d long suspected he was a regular user of under-age rent boys, and Landseer once let slip while drunk his intention to ditch the Nokia in the nearest dustbin if the police ever came close.
In turn, he would joke that Landseer’s removal from his lofty, up-market pedestal would be sudden, a midnight raid on a nightclub and an appearance at Bow Street Magistrates Court, his reputation in tatters and his face and story the toast of the tabloids. In private, he suspected his lifeless body would be found in a skip in East London, the vengeance of an angry pimp or the unbridled anger of a parent. However, the arrival of Jim and Kenny Bennett in his shop and the no-show of Landseer on the same morning was none of these; it had to be something they were involved in together.
‘Listen Miriam, if he doesn’t show up by ten o’clock can you please send someone around to his house. I fear he may have taken ill or had an accident or something.’
His secretary laughed. ‘You know Charles, he’s bullet-proof, at least that’s what he always tells us. If I can be so bold, aren’t you perhaps being a little over dramatic, Mr Brook?’
‘Miriam,’ Brook said. ‘I’ve tried his mobile, his house phone and now his office, all without success. He’s an estate agent for God’s sake! Have you ever known him to be out of contact for five minutes, never mind an hour at the start of a business day? What if I was a client planning to sell my eight-million-pound country house. I would think he doesn’t want my business and go elsewhere.’
‘When you put it like that, Mr Brook, I do have to agree with you.’
‘Thank you. Send someone around to his house soon, please. I’m very concerned.’
‘Rest assured, Mr Brook, I will do.’
‘Thank you Miriam, goodbye.’
Brook dropped the phone into his jacket pocket, turned around and headed back to the tube station. Bennett and his son were in his shop to do what, exactly? Talk to him, ask his opinion about something connected to the business? Take him away, more like. Kidnap him and subject him to unthinkable tortures until he revealed where all the stolen money was stashed, he suspected. When they got what they wanted, what would happen then? Kill him, murder him in revenge? He shuddered at the thought as he stepped on the train.
Had they got to Landseer already? Could he have spotted the way the wind was blowing and invoked his pre-prepared escape plan, as Brook was doing now? He shook his head. No, Landseer was too dumb to create an escape plan and wouldn’t have the balls to carry it through. In any case, how could he see them coming when Brook couldn’t? Landseer didn’t have the benefit of a paranoid wine shop assistant like Sam whose reading of people and spotting of shoplifters was second to none. Instead, he had the leggy but stupid Miriam, a woman who couldn’t spell the word ‘crisis’ and would be the last to react if someone dropped down dead in front of her.
During the journey home he did his best to assemble the scrambled thoughts racing around his head like a colony of ants. Plan A was to return to the house in Maida Vale, which had a large wine cellar, big enough to keep a small army of drunks in clover for a year. Perry and his people didn’t know about Maida Vale and there he could lay low until the heat cooled. It was risky and would create anxiety, as he would be constantly looking over his shoulder in supermarket queues and afraid to go out in case he was spotted.
Plan B was to leave London and never return. This required him to forget about the shop, the ideas he had for its expansion, the ever-busy Hammersmith warehouse and his beautiful house in a lovely part of the Capital. He almost cried at the implications, but no matter how difficult it would be, his mind was made up; Plan B it would be.
In deciding to go away, he added a small proviso. He would keep going until such times as he made contact with Landseer. If he detected nothing wrong, he would return home and call Bennett and try to deal with whatever fuss was bothering him. With Landseer breathing and still at his desk, it couldn’t be that serious.
He left the tube station and headed back to his house, the route he had walked in such a chirpy mood an hour or so before. Feeling paranoid, and who wouldn’t be in such circumstances, he scanned the faces of all the people he passed and glanced into parked cars, looking for watchers. He reached the front door of his house unmolested, and felt quiet satisfaction for having the presence of mind not to reveal the address of his bolt-hole to anyone.
TWENTY-FOUR
He turned on the shower and stepped inside, not caring that it ran cold for a spell before heating up. Henderson let the water cascade over his hair and face for several minutes before using soap and then shampoo. He turned off the water and got out and started to rub himself down with a towel, but even then he could still smell and taste the acrid aroma of smoke, and half-expected the towel to be streaked with black marks.
He had done the same thing last night when he returned home from Forest Farm having first slumped down on the settee, and before Rachel had cut his hair to remove all the frizzy bits. He was convinced all the cleansing was to eradicate the last vestiges of the fire, but now he believed it was to erase the picture in his head of Harvey Miller taking his last breaths.
He walked downstairs and into the kitchen. Rachel had left for work some hours before, but she was such a tidy soul there was no record of her ever having been in there. He started up the coffee machine, put a slice of bread in the toaster and stared out of the window while the two machines worked their magic.
It was the middle of June and Brighton was beginning to feel like a holiday resort again, as he could see little groups of tourists ambling past and more cars than usual cruising the street, looking for a parking place. Living so close to Brighton College, his neighbours could tell when something was on in that venerable institution, like prize giving or a speech by a famous former pupil, but he couldn’t and ascribed any increased levels of activity outside to tourists.
When going to bed last night, he decided he would only go into work in the morning if he felt fine, as he had no idea what effect the inhalation of fumes and chemicals would have on him. Now that he had eaten and drunk something, he felt good enough to go into work, but then he had a coughing fit that ended with him throwing up in the sink.
In times of illness or injury, the only things that helped him feel better were sleep and exercise, as he couldn’t slump down in front of
the television and watch an entire series of Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones as Gerry Hobbs liked to do. Sleep was out of the question as he didn’t feel tired and his exercise fall-back, a long run along Brighton seafront, held little appeal for a man with compromised lungs. Instead, he packed his swimming things into a bag and set off at a slower pace than usual to walk to the Prince Regent Swimming Complex.
When he emerged from the changing rooms and stood for a moment to put on his goggles, he was taken aback by the noise level. Early on Sunday mornings when he often came here, the pool was populated by gangs of OAPs either standing and nattering at the shallow end or making their way up and down the pool at a slow, leisurely pace. This was Friday, and instead of a load of white and grey heads, the hair colour of the sixteen and seventeen year-old school kids doing most of the shouting, was blue, red and shades of orange not seen outside of a Pantone colour card.
Henderson walked towards the roped-off lanes and entered the water. Swimming and running to him were automatic exercises, one leg or arm in front of the other while his head went off to a different place, wrestling with whatever problem that was bothering him. Today, it started off in familiar fashion, he trying to make sense of why Harvey Miller was found in the barn at Loxwood and why it had caught fire, while his arms and legs ploughed through the water as if powered by an electric motor. However, by the end of the fifth length, a sharp pain in his lungs flared, breaking his concentration and leaving him gasping for breath.
He resumed swimming and with each length the physical interruptions subsided and as expected, the strong smell of chlorine from the pool water replaced the acerbic taste of chemicals and smoke in his mouth and on his skin. When he touched the end of the pool for the twentieth time, half the distance of his normal workout, he decided he’d done enough.
If he thought the pool area had been noisy, the changing rooms were twice as bad, with kids shouting at the tops of their voices to friends they could talk to in a few minutes time outside. After dressing and drying his hair, he left the swimming complex and walked over to a café nearby. Unlike his experience earlier in the kitchen, he now felt hungry and some of his normal zip and energy had returned, tempered by a not unwelcome dull ache in his muscles from swimming.
He didn’t realise, as he didn’t come into Brighton at this time of the morning often, but many of the restaurants and cafés in the vicinity offered a breakfast menu and even at this late hour, ten forty-five, several were busy. He entered the café and ordered a ‘kill ‘em or cure ‘em’ all day special and settled into his seat to await its delivery.
He made a decision that he now felt well enough after his swim to go back into work and after eating, would return to the house and pick up the car keys and head there. He was watching a young mother outside struggle with a buggy, trying to collapse it while at the same time restraining a toddler from walking off, when his phone rang.
‘Morning sir,’ DC Sally Graham said, ‘how are you feeling?’
Henderson explained about the therapeutic effects of a dip in the pool and the soon to be devoured full English breakfast, and his intention to return to Malling House in the afternoon.
‘I’m pleased to hear it,’ Graham said, ‘when I spoke to DS Walters she said you didn’t look at all well last night.’
‘I don’t suppose I did with my face blackened with smoke and streaked in sweat. How’s she?’
‘She’s fine, sir, no after effects of the fire. She’s gone over to Forest Farm to see if the Fire Investigators have found anything and to take a look inside the farmhouse, that is if she can gain access.’
‘Not on her own, I trust?’
‘No, DC Sunderam is with her.’
‘Good, as you never know, the owner of the barn might come back and I have my suspicions they’re involved in the wine faking operation in some capacity.’
‘I understand. The reason I called was to find out how you were, of course, but also to tell you about something I saw on the serials this morning.’
‘What is it?’
‘Well, you know in team meetings we’ve discussed how the wine fakers had to have someone in an upmarket magazine or estate agency who could identify large properties with sizeable wine collections?’
‘Yes.’
‘An estate agent called Charles Landseer was found murdered in Surrey last night. With half a dozen offices in London and the Home Counties, he specialised in buying and selling large country houses.’
**
She took care guiding the car up the long driveway at Forest Farm in Loxwood, her memory still fresh of the big potholes that she and DI Henderson nearly walked into the previous night. DS Walters could see no trace of the three fire tenders, here tackling the blaze, and the only remains of the magnificent 15th century barn were a few stumps of blackened wood and a foul-smelling expanse of rubble.
A small van with the inscription ‘Fire Investigation Unit’ in big letters on the side was parked at the back. DS Walters saw the occupants of the van kneeling inside the barn, their white overalls contrasting sharply with the charred debris all around them.
‘Good morning gentlemen. I’m Detective Sergeant Walters from Surrey and Sussex CID and this is Detective Constable Sunderam,’ she said displaying her warrant card and jerking a thumb at Deepak standing beside her.
‘Good afternoon Detective Walters,’ said the older of the two, getting up to shake her hand. ‘I’m Bill Danvers and this is my colleague Kingsley Harting.’
‘We’re here to try and establish if the victim pulled from the fire last night was being held against his will, or if this was a tragic accident; a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
‘What makes you think he was being held prisoner?’
‘Why else would he be trying to escape through a locked window?’
‘Maybe the fire was burning too fiercely on the other side of the door?’ Danvers said.
‘Could be, but if it was me in there, I would sooner run through a fire to a known exit, than waste my time attempting to smash a double glazed window.’
He nodded as if in agreement. Their theory about Harvey Miller being held prisoner was also corroborated by DI Henderson, currently at home recuperating from his smoke and fire ordeal, who noticed the office door was shut, seconds before it disappeared in a ball of flame.
‘Well, I can’t tell you much about the victim, I’m afraid,’ Danvers said. ‘Our investigation is concerned with establishing the cause of the fire. I’m trying to find out what created the initial spark and what caused it to burn so ferociously. It’s a shame the rain that arrived later and is making this morning a bit of a soggy mess, didn’t arrive earlier.’
‘What can you tell me about the cause of the fire?’
Danvers gave her a look that she’d seen from suspects and witnesses many times before: will I tell you, or won’t I? In the end vanity won over his feeble attempt at proprietary as he wanted to show off to the pretty lady how smart he could be.
‘As you can see from all the glass fragments lying here, they are not the more common transparent variety associated with milk and drinks bottles but coloured like that of a wine bottle.’ He bent down and picked up a small shard of green glass. ‘What’s interesting is some pieces are thicker than normal, suggesting a more old-fashioned style of bottle I would say. Kingsley knows more about this than I do.’
The other man stood and walked over. ‘I agree with Bill about the ‘old-fashioned’ angle. Forty to fifty years ago wine, port and brandy bottles were all made out of much thicker glass than in use today. You see, they were transported in the holds of ships and the handling at the dockside was more primitive back then. Those thin, modern bottles you find in supermarkets wouldn’t last five minutes in those sorts of conditions.’
‘Yes,’ Danvers said, taking up the story like the partner in a good double-act, ‘this leads us to believe the barn was being used as some sort of wine store.’
‘Were the bottles full
or empty?’ Sunderam asked.
‘It’s hard to say. We found some evidence of wine over there,’ he said, pointing, ‘and believe it or not, we found a piece of bottle with some wine still inside. Amazing how it never evaporated in the heat.’
‘Do you have any idea how the fire started?’
‘Not yet,’ Danvers said. ‘What we’re more sure about is where it started, which was about here,’ he said pointing. ‘If my knowledge of these types of barn is correct, my sister lives in something similar in Ditchling, nothing occupies this space such as a cooker or power point. It’s nothing but open space. Therefore, it might have been a lighted rag or inflammable liquid, or the accidental tipping over of a candle or the careless discarding of a lighted cigarette.’
‘A dropped cigarette could’ve caused all this?’ Sunderam said.
‘Yeah, I’m afraid so. Don’t forget a building like this is constructed from varnished, dry wood, and with chairs, curtains, tables and alcohol added to the combustible mix, the barn would have become an uncontrollable blaze in no time. So, before we give you a definite answer as to the cause, we first need to analyse the wood fragments around where we believe the seat of the fire to be, and look for traces of propellants such as petrol or white spirit.’
‘Thanks for your time gents,’ Walters said, ‘you’ve been very enlightening. Do you know anything about the owners or occupants of the barn? I assume it belongs to the people living in the farmhouse?’
‘When we arrived,’ Danvers said, ‘we met the housekeeper who I believe is still in the house cleaning, but we didn’t see anyone else. If you find the owner, please let me know as I would like a word as well.’
She walked to the back door, the one she had been vainly banging on last night, but this time with Deepak beside her. ‘And they say SOCOs are pedantic.’
Deepak laughed, showing a gap in his front teeth. ‘Give them time, they’re getting there.’
